


Music of the Spheres

by kusuriurikun



Series: Shibuya Continuum [9]
Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: (Even if the method is not canonical), Alcohol, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Inspired by Music, Music, Music From A Lot Of Dead Musicians, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27939752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kusuriurikun/pseuds/kusuriurikun
Summary: In the Dead God's Pad, Megumi Kitaniji drinks alone.And thinks of just what a terrible, terrible mess he's gotten himself into with his bet with the Composer.And hopes he's not got the dead man's hand.(Minor content warnings: Alcohol, implied alcohol abuse, some explicit lyrics in the extensive song links.)
Relationships: Kiryu "Joshua" Yoshiya & Kitaniji Megumi, Kitaniji Megumi & Reaper Officers
Series: Shibuya Continuum [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902298
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

Where the hell had it all gone horribly wrong?

Megumi Kitaniji sits alone in the Dead God’s Pad with a drink in front of him. Usually the concoction with Midori in it is comfort.

Today it’s a mix of a comfort drink and trying to drown out shit in his head.

The repro Wurlitzer in the corner seemed to [ simultaneously be expressing his mood and mocking him](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLN72sR9w0M) in the form of Janis Joplin serving tea.

Mocking him as he sits with a drink in one hand and that goddamn clock ticking in the other.

The last time he’d had a clock on his hand like that was...good lord, how long had it been, anyways? Fifty years and change? 

> From what he remembers of the last day of his life, he’d just had a hell of a good time at the after-party after the “official” release party. The official release parties were fun, yes, but the after-parties were where people really let their hair down and didn’t have to keep up the act (while, of course, still living the wild life).
> 
> Where he could get a good look at the talent. This time, it was some new act that’d been influenced by psychedelic soul, a particular genre he’d really grooved on lately now that psychedelic rock was starting to wane...
> 
> _This_ one was a memorable one...or would have been if it weren’t 1973, and everyone was having way too much _fun_.
> 
> Megumi Kitaniji dimly remembers stumbling from an izakaya bar to where the afterparty was held. Dimly remembers a watching party for “Easy Rider” which came out.
> 
> Doesn’t really remember anything after that until the next morning.
> 
> He is still not entirely sure how the hell he woke up in the Scramble the next morning with a ticker on his hand like a Nixie clock, and a man in what looked for all the world like an NTT employee (except the hat read “RTT”) saying he had a very urgent message for a Mr. Kitaniji, with a telegram directing him to the Hachiko statue.
> 
> He remembers he was rather surprised at finding he was dead, but found out some of his old organizational skills and talent at finding talent were still alive...and eventually, makes his way up and finds himself promoted to Conductor and it’s been a good gig so far.
> 
> Until last month.

* * *

The Wurlitzer has [ The Doors reminding of the stakes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeMlQEWEg2Q) as Megumi frowns and grouses at the situation he’s in.

It’d started innocently enough. He and the Composer had been walking through the chaos that was Shibuya--the bright lights of the Scramble and Center Street, the couples laughing down Spain Hill, the mix of ramen shops and love hotels and arcades and night-clubs on Dogenzaka and in the back streets _off_ Dogenzaka, the eclecticness that was Cat Street...the rawness that was Udagawa’s back streets…

They arrived at Miyashita Park, then back down to...well, you couldn’t really call it a _river_ so much as a _viaduct_ \--the Shibuya River had long ago been covered over by the train station, and the Scramble, and even its main tributary was under Cat Street at this point.

Megumi--for his part--always has appreciated the chaos.

(The lights and--yes--the Dogenzaka back street’s _flavor_ reminded him a lot of those crazy times back in the sixties, and in the seventies when disco happened, and in the 80s and 90s when Shibuya finally found its own musical soul. Udagawa brought back fond memories of when a bunch of local punks took the punk and shock-rock imagery and made it their own and birthed an entire genre--he’d actually heard visual kei was being adopted by _Americans_ now under the nickname of “bubblegum punk”...and then Shibuya-kei and city music became the THING, pretty much had started a whole musical revolution.)

And then Joshua drops the bomb...he’s finding things too boring. Too clashing. Too internally in conflict. Too _unfinished_ in some ways. Too _wrong._

He wants to wipe the slate clean. Start over.

This is like a knife in Megumi Kitaniji’s heart. All the work he’s put into growing this...yeah, Shibuya-kei had fallen out of fashion, but trends shifted...but it didn’t mean the soul of the city was dead.

Things changed, but that didn’t mean the whole thing was devolving into corruption.

Why couldn’t Joshua see that? 

And then Joshua makes the offer. An offer he couldn’t refuse, an offer he was SURE he could win.

One which he’s completely unsure he can win now.

_So...we’ll make a bet. Three weeks, if you can turn this around...make it interesting...show me the worth in this city…_

Where the hell had it gone wrong?

* * *

The first week had gone fine. Higashizawa was damn good, and it’d be good to see him prove himself, and--as much as he hated to admit it--even _if_ inflicting Minamimoto on the first week would have been _fun_ he’d rather have something theoretically controllable.

Or more properly, some _one_. And he’d LIKED Higashizawa. Saw promise in him. 

He was going to miss Yodai. He could have gone places.

(There were a lot of people he was gonna miss. A lot he did miss.)

He hadn’t counted on the most recent batch of kids in the Game being so strong, but--like any good leader--he always tried to have a plan B.

And it was pretty much at the point he set up his pieces in this demented game of chess he was playing with the Composer--putting Higashizawa on week 1, working out that whole “Everyone clashes too much for my liking” complaint the Composer had which was the reason he was wanting to reset Shibuya--that he’d gotten the idea for the Plan B he had.

If he could get enough promotion out, and get those pins out, maybe [ he could get the whole place to shout as one and make damn sure it wouldn’t change for the worse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkF3oxziUI4).

Thankfully, that salaryman had turned out to be one _hell_ of a good promoter.

And then on Week 2, it had all gone to hell.

* * *

Almost as if it were a demented (and very day-glo) Greek chorus, the Wurlitzer goes into the [ Peppermint Creeps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdM8O_n95tY).

(Pretty much obviously a parting “gift” from Minamimoto. He’d let the Officers bring in their own music as “team bonding”. Usually the record selections from the other Officers were pop, or (in the case of the very short-lived Gundam otaku who’d managed to get himself removed two days into his Officer gig) anime soundtracks...you could get a lot on someone’s personality from their music selections.)

He’s not sure where in Week 2 things _exactly_ went to hell.

It could have been when the Composer decided HE wanted to play in the game.  
It could have been when the damn Taboo Noise started showing up.   
It could have been the First Minamimoto Incident. (He idly notes if they survive all this, both Yashiro and Kariya are getting promotions. Kariya is in fact getting a promotion whether he wants it or _not_ , even if he has to physically drag him kicking and screaming into the Dead God’s Pad _himself_.)   
It could have been the Second Minamimoto Incident. (He wasn’t even aware you could _weaponize_ math like that.)   
It could have been where the Composer fucked off to parts unknown in the immediate consequences of the Second Minamimoto Incident.

By Week 3, though...certainly by today, at least...it’s definitely apparent things have very much gone to [ hell in a bucket](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Bs4xhDyxw), and--for his part--Megumi Kitaniji is _not_ in fact enjoying the ride. He in fact wants _off_ the damned ride...except he can't, because _everyone is screwed_ if he gets off the merry-go-round.

Megumi pours another drink. He doesn’t want to think about things. He _needs_ to think about things because right now he is alone, dreadfully alone, in the George Thorogood sense.

Because literally everyone he could have relied on for his bid has fucked off, fucked him over, or fucking gotten themselves Erased.

And Megumi Kitaniji knows all too well if he doesn’t manage to figure SOME way to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat...everyone is screwed here, _Shibuya_ is screwed, this eccentric little place he calls home is going to be gone, undone, _as if it never was..._

And almost as if to answer, the Wurlitzer shifts from the Grateful Dead, and [ Hanoi Rocks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9EL7CQRQJI) plays on the old jukebox as if to add emphasis as to his mental state. (Another Minamimotoism, he notes to himself, though interestingly one he’d gotten influence from _Kariya_ on, of all things…)

 _Yeah_ , Megumi Kitaniji thinks to himself. _“Tooting bec wreck”_ _is a pretty accurate description of my state and the present state of affairs...Goddamn, things are a mess, aren’t they?_

He looks at his hand involuntarily. That damnable Nixie clock countdown is still going on. Still burns every much as it did nearly a month ago when he took this damn fool’s bargain.

The Taboo Noise is back. Somehow, despite having had HQ erase that damn Taboo Noise refinery sigil, _Minamimoto_ is somehow back from Erasure, and has in fact recruited _Konishi_ in what is apparently some sort of demented coup attempt against the Composer.

Konishi, whom he’s trusted for the better part of a decade and a half, pretty much is as willing to stab him in the back as anyone else. (This stings. This really stings.)

And that goddamn ticker on his hand just _keeps going_.

He looks at the statistics--one of the last things he got from Konishi before the bitch showed her true colors--on the distribution of his one gambit he has left. His one tool in the toybox.

He looks at the O-pin uptake charts, and thinks at this point there’s a critical mass. Just enough.

Just enough to keep a semblance of what he loves about Shibuya, and will fight to the end to keep. 

Even at his own cost.

As if to answer, the Wurlitzer--which Megumi Kitaniji now suspects in his Midori-addled state is somehow a psychic jukebox--[ has Freddie Mercury’s voice answer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jtpf8N5IDE).

_Who wants to live forever?_   
_Who?_   
_Who dares to love forever_   
_Oh, when love must die?_


	2. Appendix: Author's notes

Yeah, there is a bit of a musical theme here--namely, pretty much every artist linked here essentially died (or had a major member of their band die) at their prime, which...I think would be oddly fitting with some headcanons I have re Megs and what he did before death. 

(I’ve also made a rather deliberate decision _not_ to include deceased artist from Japan, much less Shibuya; honestly most artists who would have died in Japan from 1973 onward would have had a non-negligible chance of dying in Shibuya and thus becoming “Game-eligible”. Other places have their own Games, and I’m sure Hollywood’s UG is a busy place indeed at times, but wanted to get that out there.)

The specific date of 1973 is actually quite deliberate. Not just because of certain headcanons I have, but 1973 is (arguably) when “Modern Shibuya” really started, as [ this was the opening date of Shibuya PARCO](https://www.otaquest.com/interview-with-shibuya-parco-manager/) (the inspiration for Molco in TWEWY proper, and now newly “un-bowdlerized” in NEO: TWEWY). It’s actually quite interesting HOW much PARCO set the stage--Spain-zaka Slope (the RL location of “Spain Hill” in TWEWY and NEO: TWEWY) actually got renamed as a result of PARCO’s construction, among other things.

In addition, 1973 is when NHK (the “state broadcaster” for Japan) opened up its studios and symphony hall in Shibuya (which is oddly fitting for a Composer, after all).

And yes, the bits about the Shibuya River--every bit of it is true. The River was largely covered up (from what is now the Shibuya Stream shopping centre and what is depicted as the Station Underpass in TWEWY northward) in the early 60s, when building for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics happened (and had been rather severely polluted beforehand); the river splits (underground) into tributaries roughly under the 109 building, and Cat Street in particular is a former riverbed (and has a tributary of the Shibuya River running under its course). Apparently a large number of roads in Shibuya are former riverbeds; [ here’s an interesting site that goes into this](https://riverculture.wordpress.com/2014/06/21/imagining-the-shibuya-river/).

* * *

This one came to me in a particularly low/depressive/”deeply concerned about the state of things” period of my life about a month or so back (late October/early November) in a fell swoop, and really about the only thing that’s changed in the refining of it is the “soundtrack” as it were.

Thankfully I’m in a MUCH better headspace now, but I can say that in the decade since I first played TWEWY I’ve gained a bit of appreciation for Kitaniji and the (legitimately) hopeless situation he was put in. 

It also gave me a bit of a chance to do some experimentation...much as I work in Inappropriate Mathematical Metaphors with Sho, and (later on) will work with Inappropriate Fae References with Coco, et al...I tend to associate Megs with being a studio exec or producer, and so music imagery is definitely something that comes to mind (and this means that pretty much anything I touch with Megs is gonna turn into a de facto musical playlist).

And as it looks like he’s not going to be coming back in NEO...well...a shot of Midori in his memory. [ Shine on, you crazy diamond](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWGE9Gi0bB0). 


End file.
